Aunt Charged In Abuse Of Starving Boys

May 16, 1986|By Jonathan Susskind, Staff Writer

FORT LAUDERDALE -- Sylvia Anna Edison, who cared for her two nephews while their mother was in prison, fed them one meal a day of rice, beans and grits and beat them daily with a switch and a shoe, police said Thursday after arresting her on child abuse and neglect charges.

The boys -- one 3 years old, the other 22 months -- were taken from her home last Friday afternoon by state child welfare officials, ending what Edison`s partner claims were months of frustration because those same officials ignored frequent pleas to take the sickly younger child to a doctor.

The severely malnourished child, Vincent Edison, was still in serious condition Thursday at Broward General Medical Center, two days after his older half-brother, Loran Allen, was released and put in a foster home.

Leopold Brown, 31, a roofing mechanic who said he is Edison`s husband, said Thursday that Vincent had been sick ever since he came from a Miami foster home just before Christmas to live with the couple in their one-story block home in the 2300 block of Northwest 14th Court.

``He ate, but he just couldn`t hold his food,`` said Brown. Loran, who came to the couple from a Broward foster home last August, ``was fine,`` he said.

While conducting separate inquiries into the case, officials from the Dade and Broward offices of the state Department of Health and Rehabilitative Services will meet today to discuss the case.

Linda Berkowitz, HRS administrator in Dade, said she would appoint a three- member committee today to investigate the matter.

Citing confidentiality laws, officials could not say whether Edison`s requests for aid for Vincent were ignored or lost, whether the boy had medical attention before he was brought to his aunt, or whether there were similar problems in the Dade foster home.

``Right now, all we have are pieces of the puzzle,`` said John Stokesberry, administrator of the Broward HRS office. ``We need all the pieces together,`` he said, adding that the inquiry ``will be on a very fast track because we want to make sure nothing like this ever happens again.``

If any mistakes were made by HRS, Stokesberry said they probably occurred because of short staffing and high caseloads for counselors.

Esther Edison, the boys` mother, was sentenced to 366 days in prison on Feb. 27 on a charge of violating probation from an earlier burglary conviction, Fort Lauderdale police spokesman Ott Cefkin said.

Brown said Loran`s father is in jail and he did not know where Vincent`s father is. He said his wife used to work for Motorola in Sunrise as an electronics assembler but quit to take care of her nephews and her son by Brown, Travis, 3.

From the start, Vincent was a difficult child, Brown said. He smelled bad -- ``Horrible, I can`t even describe it`` -- even after bathing, and seemed listless and mentally retarded, Brown said.

``You know what it`s like with a normal kid,`` Brown said, waiting to talk to detectives and struggling to control the rambunctious Travis. ``He (Vincent) just sat there, didn`t do nothing.``

Brown said HRS caseworkers had visited Loran at least twice that he knew of, but none visited Vincent. He said his wife called frequently to get help for the sick child.

``She`d call three and four times a day and all they`d do is just hang up on her,`` he said. Finally she called Legal Aid, where someone referred her to another government office, he said.

``Then the police came,`` he said. Brown wasn`t home.

``She wasn`t expecting the police, and they carried on like it was so bad, like she was a criminal or something, and all she was trying to do was to get help,`` he said.

Brown denied that Edison mistreated the boys, but police reported that she said that she ``beat them when they cried, or she was mad at her sister, father or the system.``

Barbara Sterry, supervisor of the HRS Children, Youth and Families Division in Broward, said caseworkers generally follow up on foster children who are returned to their families.

She said HRS officials are supposed to arrange follow-up visits for a child who is transferred from a foster home in one HRS district to a foster home or relatives in another district.

Sterry said confidentiality laws prevented her from saying whether such arrangements had been made in this case.

Vincent`s pediatrician, Dr. Harry Robelen, said the boy has severe protein depletion, anemia and weight loss, all symptoms of starvation. He has not eaten solid food but was drinking fluids and being fed intravenously, Robelen said.